Dexter: Season 4 Review

Heading into this review, I think that we can pretty much all agree that this season of Dexter was both fun and nightmarish. This series has managed to capture an incredible balance of gallows humor and trauma. It's created its own heightened, yet unique and insulated, world in which we can easily find ourselves invested in the hopes and dreams of a dysfunctional, vigilante murderer. This season led us on many twists and turns as Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) sought out "the secret" to a balanced home life; a system that would allow him to lead a happy suburban family life while still being able to satisfy the inner bloodlust of his "Dark Passenger."

After looking for answers in all the wrong places, we saw that the lesson that Dexter was destined to learn was a tragic one and that there was, ultimately, no way to serve two masters. The happy domesticated life that he desired actually needed to be desired above all else. Unfortunately, that revelation came to Dexter too late, in the season finale "The Getaway," and by then, the cat and mouse game that he'd initiated with The Trinity Killer (John Lithgow) had come back to totally debase and destroy all of Dexter's dreams.